Nokia Unveils Open Source Mobile Browser

Nokia Corp. on Wednesday unveiled an open-source, mobile-phone Web browser that's based on technology from Apple Computer Inc.

The new browser is for the Finnish company's S60 advanced cellular phones. It's been built on WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari Web Kit, an open source Web rendering engine for mobile devices. Apple uses the components in its Safari browser that ships with its Mac computers and notebooks.

Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, made the announcement at its Mobility Conference 2005 in Barcelona, Spain.

Nokia is banking on the browser, which it claims performs well on high-speed, 3G networks, to help drive more mobile-phone users to the Web to search for and download more content. The new product includes features that reduce the amount of scrolling, block pop-up ads and offer text search and a visual history of web pages.

Nokia is also hoping that S60 licensees and open-source developers will build add-ins for the browser, using its open application programming interfaces. The S60 mobile-phone platform is built on the Symbian operating system.